There are more and more companies adopting open source solutions in favor of proprietary software due to the cost savings they can reap, although perhaps not enough. Today, I noticed this release from IBM about Italian food company Gruppo Amadori rolling out Red Hat Enterprise Linux with desktops running IBM software, much of which is free, and some of which has open source roots.

Red Hat, the world's leading provider of open source solutions, today announced that three leading Italian organizations, including CSI-Piemonte, one of the top fifteen software and services companies in Italy, Iride Energia, a leading thermal and electric energy provider in Italy and the City of Marsala have found success with Red Hat solutions.

The Italian Constitutional Court just published its decision: two articles of a 2009 Italian regional law that promotes Free Software and open digital standards violate the Italian Constitution. It will be VERY interesting now to find how many other local laws (both in Italy and in OTHER countries) have similar problems...

Most major organizations have already made the move to adopting open source for some enterprise functions. But few have adopted the principles and practices of the open source community as an enterprise model.

o3 magazine, the enterprise Open Source magazine, today announced a beta of its news portal, o3news. The portal is designed to track all Open Source enterprise-related news. The service guarantees 24/7 coverage across timezones thanks to a globally distributed staff that monitors over 25 news sources to keep you updated with enterprise news as it breaks.

Google has become an Open Invention Network licensee. Here's the press release about it.

"An appeal won on 24 September 2008 against the decision of the Italian court enforced on 10 August 2008 ordering the seizure of The Pirate Bay (TPB) in Italy, has been reversed by the Italian Court of Cassation..."

Can Open source methodology, with its promise of spreading benefits through new varieties of intellectual property, and which has played a major role in software development, also play a role in nanotech development?

The Chamber of Commerce of Ferrara, the first PloneGov Italian member, invites 100 representatives from the public sector and open source experts to participate to the official launch of PloneGov in Italy on September 16, 2008.